On This Shore

Love

Reaches to this shore:

This partial place

Where broken monuments to stone-dead hopes

Stand in the rubble,

Foolishly restored

By men with solemn ribbons on their chains.

We, who have glimpsed,

Or dreamt,

A better light,

Flailing our way through scrambled pilgrimage,

With stone-grazed hands and shins,

Stubbed toes,

And count our wounds as worthy;

Give us strength

To travel further, harder,

To do more,

And to be unafraid of sitting still

Under the willows, where the old lyres hang,

Mourning our exile,

Mourning our own kind,

Waiting until the morning of Love’s lovely dawn,

Claiming the promised land here in the dark.

May all our tears be rain.